My cat thinks
Not that he is a cat.
But hey! Who knows?
He is a human who never
got to see the sun of life
but returned from the other
Not drinking from the Lethe
wearing a cat-skin in tabby
to live with his family, poor
but rich with love and care.
The cat knows the secrets
of life and the life beyond,
and this universe he lives
he knows it’s one of many
he has seen in his cat’s eyes
he has traveled in paws.
No wonder he is so beautiful.
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
Sister Teresa of Calcutta said charity begins at home, and I agree with her wholeheartedly. If you do not care for those close to you, then you can’t care for others, even if you would deny it. But of course, that doesn’t mean my neighbors!
That said, if I should be so lucky – oh, so lucky! – to have a fortune to give away, I would first help my brother so that he could clear away his financial burdens and help him start his new family. Then, I will look for our relatives who may be struggling financially. Thereafter, I will donate funds to my church and ask the priest to help parishioners who are having difficulty with healthcare, housing, and educational costs.
I would love to say I would donate a million dollars to well-known charity organizations with noble causes, but these are my wishes to help people with my lucky fortune.
Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.
When I read the story of the stranded Beluga whale who died in France’s Seine River in 2022, I felt like my spirit was in communion with hers because I could feel what she might have felt—what was once hopeful turned into disappointment and loneliness.
No one knew what caused her to separate from her pod and end up in the river, but I think she wanted to see the world herself, with the images of kind humans she had once seen on the ocean in her memory. So she came to our world full of expectations for welcoming faces and smiles, but instead, she found herself in a murky gray urban river that made her loneliness more conspicuous, more incongruent.
Likewise, that’s how I feel when I find myself surrounded by crowds that make my presence awkwardly conspicuous, shielded by an invisible wall of willing ignorance.
What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?
I am a bonus reaper and record collector. I am a wonder-worker. No braggadocio. Without me, the team cannot get a bonus. That is my top priority tomorrow morning: meeting the quotas for getting a bonus added to the team’s next paycheck.
First, I should follow up on the request for the records made last Friday so that attorneys can send demand letters to insurance companies to settle the cases. After checking my daily incoming emails, sending email reminders will be my first task. Like Earl of Kent, the loyal servant to King Lear, which an ordinary man is qualified for, I am fit for, and the best of me is diligence. But my manager is not King Lear; therefore, she ignores the best of me and favors her favorite servant, who is a knave young man with youthful bravado and scornful hubris. But I believe one day, the truth is to be told because the truth is truth to the end of reckoning.
Nevertheless, I will reap my first priority tomorrow morning with the Earl of Kent’s diligence and Cordelia’s truthfulness.
What could you do more of?
I could do more by being less serious about myself and the things around me so that I can relieve myself from the yoke of anxiety and anxiousness. The more I think, the more I worry like a spinning potter’s wheel until it breaks and splatters mud all around.
Some wise men say you should laugh about things that you made mistakes about or made you mad about because then you wouldn’t feel so miserable or bitter about yourself. As I am getting ripen with the the numbers of moons and suns I have seen, I have begun to realize it has truth.
Life is too short to torture myself for things I can’t change in watching the phantasmagorical display of my life in the end, thinking, “Oh my, wasn’t I so serious about nothing!”
So, I could also practice laughing more and thinking less.
What TV shows did you watch as a kid?
I used it to watch “Knight Rider” and “MacGyver” as a kid in the 80s because they were adventurous and chivalrous, Indiana Jones-type protagonists with bona ride missions to accomplish assigned by their benign wise bosses, of mercenaries of good causes for the Pax Americana.
But regardless of the zeitgeist of the 80s, both shows were distinguished by their use of wits rather than guns. They were modern-day Western shows minus firearms and horses, in which good guys fought off bad guys and continued their journeys as romantic wanderers.
To calling back yesterday, there were remakes of my favorite TV shows, but alas, the spirit of yesterday was not summoned with a wishful bid time return. You can never go back to yesterday.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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